Bridge of Names
(2025)(The fifth book in the RPG Oathrunner series)
A novel by Bogdan Chugunov and Craig Zerf
Boring saves lives. That’s Miles Kade’s doctrine—and the river keeps testing it.
When a battered city clings to a single span for medicine, food, and hope, Miles does the unglamorous work: carving names into scavenged plates, tuning ribs with late taps, and turning a bec de corbin into a board post the law can lean on. Quiet Hours are sacred. Med lanes are public. And No Duets—ever.
So of course the grifters arrive.
A corporate ‘Grey’ clinic starts buying debt with clean gauze. Third Force wheels in hush boxes and a ‘smart span’ that can bill your heartbeat. And somewhere east, a privatized lock is learning to charge the river rent. Rumors say a silent Ranger with Miles’s eyes keeps time for the wrong side. Family, maybe. Or a trap with scars.
To hold the span, Miles and his crew have one weapon the salesmen don’t: reading at knee height. With the bell captain Sera, paste-witch Tamsin, ledger-wolf Hargreeve, and Ghost (a velvet wall with paws), they audit in public, vote with bells, and shame bad engineering into behaving. The corbin gets a new trick—paired-only choke ring—but timing still beats power, and link isn’t a duet.
If they win, the bridge stays boring and everyone lives. If they lose, the city becomes a spreadsheet.
Expect:
When a battered city clings to a single span for medicine, food, and hope, Miles does the unglamorous work: carving names into scavenged plates, tuning ribs with late taps, and turning a bec de corbin into a board post the law can lean on. Quiet Hours are sacred. Med lanes are public. And No Duets—ever.
So of course the grifters arrive.
A corporate ‘Grey’ clinic starts buying debt with clean gauze. Third Force wheels in hush boxes and a ‘smart span’ that can bill your heartbeat. And somewhere east, a privatized lock is learning to charge the river rent. Rumors say a silent Ranger with Miles’s eyes keeps time for the wrong side. Family, maybe. Or a trap with scars.
To hold the span, Miles and his crew have one weapon the salesmen don’t: reading at knee height. With the bell captain Sera, paste-witch Tamsin, ledger-wolf Hargreeve, and Ghost (a velvet wall with paws), they audit in public, vote with bells, and shame bad engineering into behaving. The corbin gets a new trick—paired-only choke ring—but timing still beats power, and link isn’t a duet.
If they win, the bridge stays boring and everyone lives. If they lose, the city becomes a spreadsheet.
Expect:
- Third-person LitRPG with light, crunchy-enough mechanics (skills, upgrades, check-ins—no stat sprawl)
Dark humor, competence porn, and civic fantasy (hearings, receipts, and righteous paste)
A uniquely weaponized bec de corbin, a Wrecker that honks two—late, and a dog who enforces policy by napping in the worst possible place
A downstream arc hook: dam + lock. Bring knees.
Perfect for readers who love: Progression that favors craft over fireworks, found-family crews, systems you can smell, and worlds where public law is a literal, portable board.
Content notes: peril on bridges, light civic violence, corporate predation pointed at with receipts, zero grimdark edge-lording.
Read Book Five of Oathrunner and watch a city refuse to be sold its own lungs—one late tap, one receipt, one nameplate at a time.
Genre: Science Fiction
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